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With the advent of the festive season the advertising industry has escalated their shock factor: advertisements seem to be working really hard to get the consumer’s attention. A few adverts have caught my eye recently—for all the wrong reasons. While browsing at Stuttafords I was confronted by an image of a woman's legs with the rest of her body forming the shape of a Christmas tree made of shopping bags. I shared the image on Facebook and friends pointed out my discomfort about the advert wasn’t irrational. One friend responded with “Woman-as-object. Shopping stereotype. Sexualization. Fragmented body.” While another cleverly joined in the conversation with “Nothing wrong, here. Just another womyn objectified to sell sh*t. Buy our sh*t. Get sex.”

I made my discomfort known to Stuttafords via Twitter only to be told the ad is part of a larger “Spoil campaign” with images of men and women whose faces and bodies have been replaced with shopping bags. I guess the advert got my atten…